By Chris WittsTuesday 30 Apr 2024Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
Even if you’re not into movies, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of the Star Wars series. They burst onto our cinema screens first back in 1977. It became hugely popular and made a lot of money. Star Wars became a blockbuster hit, leading to a number of the Sequels and has won many awards. I wonder if you’ve seen any of the Star Wars series. What can we learn from the Star Wars films? Is it simply entertainment or some vehicle for moral truth?
No doubt there is a large dose of Eastern mythology in the movies, but the film creator George Lucas said it’s a fairy tale that teaches ultimate truths. Good is good, evil is evil. And he said, I even like old fashioned romance. George Lucas sees himself as a teacher, and there are quite a few lessons to observe in films like this, and I think that’s part of the appeal here.
Low dose theology
The viewers are looking for something different, a good story with some mystery, and I call the Star Wars series low dose theology and it does connect with postmodern culture, and we say, ‘may the force be with you’. What force is it? Is the force just reserved for a few warriors? Let me give you a few examples from the film.
The original series tells of one Jedi knight named Luke Skywalker. He had to deal with his own anger issues, and Luke also had to have a proper understanding of fear. He learned to use the force to face his enemy and overcome the dark side. Fortunately, he could listen to the force, and he chose love over fear, and that saved him from falling into the dark side.
This allowed his father to find redemption by sacrificing himself to save his son. So that’s part of the story. It’s a bit complicated, unless you’ve seen the movie. And in 1999 in the interview of The Time magazine, George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, described his goal for the religious character of the films.
“The force was meant to point to a vague, undefined sense of the supernatural,” he said. “I put the force into the movie in order to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people, more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system. I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery.”
And I’m sure he’s right. People have been talking about it ever since, and I sense the Star Wars films uncovers a hunger for spiritual connection to point us to a divine being that inspires awareness of the supernatural, or at least a search for the supernatural. But what is it? What is the supernatural? We live in this logic-based culture that makes it even more difficult to experience the supernatural. And I’m not surprised when I hear people say I don’t believe in God.
Many people had nightmares as kids or watched horror movies that cause them to grow up, fearing anything that’s supernatural. We need to have a radical faith in a God who is able to turn the impossible into the possible. There’s more out there than we can actually see. You can’t see the wind, but if you’ve lived through a wild storm, you know the wind is there. If you’ve got sick, you can’t see the germs or the parasites that have infected you, but you know it’s there. You know you’re sick.
Your mind, your personality, that part of you that’s unique, that makes you . We call it the soul or the spirit and it is unseen, but it’s very real. We all have this curiosity to know what’s out there, and God put it there. In fact, it was the Apostle Paul who one day was speaking to a group of first century sceptics who didn’t believe in God or Jesus. And Paul said from one man he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth. He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.
‘God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.’ – that’s from Acts 17. There’s more to life than we can simply see. We have this curiosity to seek. After God? God is real. Just reach out to Him in faith and believe in Him.
Let’s Pray
Dear God, we know that phrase – ‘May the force be with you’. Thank you that you are that force who is not just blowing in the wind somewhere, but is the personality of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit who comes to us in power and in love and enriches our life through the person of Jesus. Help me to be a believer in things I can’t see as I trust in you day by day, Amen.